Spoiler Alert: Millennials Prefer Digital for All Communications

Except in Germany, where face-to-face interactions are slightly more favorable

A September 2017 survey of young adult internet users in select countries painted an interesting—and yet unsurprising—picture of their typical day-to-day interactions.

The study from LivePerson, a provider of cloud-based mobile and online business messaging solutions, surveyed 4,013 internet users ages 18 to 34 in six countries: Australia, Germany, France, Japan, the UK and the US.

In the US and the UK, nearly three-quarters of respondents said they were more likely to communicate digitally—whether via email, SMS or social media—rather than in person.

Similar results were seen in Australia and France, where at least 61.0% of respondents said they communicate digitally as opposed to in person.

In Germany, however, the outcome was nearly split. While 49.9% of respondents said they communicate more digitally, 50.1% said they interact more with a person face to face.

Perhaps these digital interactions stem from people’s obsessions with their devices. The study also asked respondents how they interact with their mobile device on a regular basis. Roughly seven in 10 said they sleep within arm’s reach of it, while nearly two-thirds said they bring it to the bathroom. And over half said that if they woke up in the middle of the night, they would check their device.

And it’s not just millennials who are obsessed with their gadget. Younger users, specifically teens, are as well. A Q4 2016 survey of teen internet users worldwide from GlobalWebIndex found that on a typical day, this group spends 3 hours, 38 minutes surfing the web via their smartphones.